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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Future of Grocery

Let’s Unpack the Possible DoorDash + Gorillas Deal

Last week the Financial Times reported that third-party delivery giant DoorDash was in talks to buy a stake in German speedy grocery delivery startup Gorillas. While there weren’t a ton of details, such as how big any such stake would be, a follow-up story from Axios said the deal could give DoorDash the option to acquire a controlling interest in Gorillas eventually.

This could actually be a good deal for DoorDash for a number of reasons.

The sudden rise of speedy grocery delivery has been one of the big food tech stories of 2021. These fast delivery services operate a network of smaller dark stores that carry a small inventory and deliver goods to a limited radius in as short a time span as 10 minutes.

Europe in particular has been a hotbed of activity in the speedy delivery space, with startups such as Getir, Glovo and Gorillas each raising hundreds of millions of dollars a piece to expand their operations. Here in the U.S., speedy delivery is currently centered in New York City where Fridge No More, 1520, JOKR and Buyk operate, though we are seeing services like Food Rocket in San Francisco.

In terms of fundraising, Gopuff has left players on both sides of the pond in the dust, having raised $2.5 billion in just this past six months and $3.4 billion in total. Gopuff is a little different from other players in that it does not promise super fast delivery, opting instead for the comparatively sluggish half-hour delivery times (though the service delivers around the clock). But it’s enough of a comp to be included among the new wave of startups shaking up grocery delivery.

Gopuff’s now-sizable warchest has probably spurred DoorDash to get moving on speedy delivery. DoorDash has been steadily moving beyond just restaurant delivery and into the convenience store and grocery categories, and last year DoorDash launched DashMart, the company’s own chain of delivery-only c-stores. But Gopuff is aggressively expanding its operations across the U.S. and now operates 450 delivery facilities in 850 U.S. cities. Additionally, Gopuff is starting to encroach on DoorDash’s core restaurant turf with the addition of Gopuff ghost kitchens that offer hot meals like pizza, pasta and more for delivery. In other words, DoorDash can probably feel Gopuff nipping at its heels.

This brings us back to Gorillas. The Financial Times speculated that DoorDash investing in Gorillas was a play for European expansion. But there seems to be plenty of value right here in the U.S. Though it’s based in Germany, Gorillas expanded into the U.S. with its launch in New York City in May of this year. Since then, it’s been the first speedy delivery service to set up operations on both coasts as it hires out teams in San Francisco and Los Angeles. (It’s also moving into Chicago.)

An investment and potential controlling stake in Gorillas does a few things for DoorDash. First, there is probably some FOMO for DoorDash. While speedy grocery delivery services are new, they have the potential to upend the way we shop for groceries, as they turns the act of grocery shopping into something more like a utility — always there when you need it. Ten-minute delivery could become the new standard, and DoorDash doesn’t want to miss out.

But this is what makes the reported two-step investment structure of the Gorillas investment interesting. DoorDash, which is flush with its own IPO cash, can pony up some money right now and learn from Gorillas as it scales up both here and abroad. Speedy delivery startups have yet to prove if they can economically scale, and right now, they need to be in areas that are densely populated to make money. There’s still a good chance that Gorillas and the like could become the next Kozmo.com. If speedy delivery catches on, then DoorDash can swoop in, gobble up the rest of Gorillas and re-brand the entire operation as DoorDash. If Gorillas flames out, well, that’s a bummer, but DoorDash still has all of its other delivery businesses.

A smaller side story to watch with all this is whether any DoorDash investment in Gorillas would also translate into Gorillas getting Chowbotics food robots. DoorDash acquired Chowbotics earlier this year and is reportedly using the robots to create ready-to-eat salads and microwaveable meals for its DashMart stores. As I wrote last week, food robots could be a killer app for speedy grocery delivery because they create customized meals in a very small footprint.

Should DoorDash invest in Gorillas and wind up with a controlling stake, such a union would set up a bit of an existential question for DoorDash. For good and ill, DoorDash was built on the backs of contract labor. Part of the pitch from Gorillas and other speedy delivery services is that their delivery drivers are employees that receive a salary and benefits. Speedy grocers have explained to me over the past few months that having their own drivers means they can ensure faster delivery. Speedy delivery services know how many people to staff, when they are out on deliveries, when they will return, etc. DoorDash, on the other hand, has to send out delivery jobs to a network of contractors each time to find a delivery person. If speedy delivery is a game of minutes, then every second counts.

The Financial Times said that the deal is being finalized and could close at the end of this month. If the deal goes through, DoorDash could quickly become an 800 lbs gorilla in the speedy delivery space.

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DoorDash Users Can Now Add C-Store Items to Their Restaurant Orders

DoorDash this week launched a new feature, DoubleDash, that lets users bundle items from different businesses like convenience stores together into a single transaction. DoorDash customers can add c-store items to their original restaurant order and checkout with a single transaction and no extra delivery fees, according to a company blog post.

DoubleDash is currently available for 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Wawa, QuickChek, and The Ice Cream Shop. It is also available for orders placed at DoorDash’s DashMart convenience store operation.

Customers placing a restaurant order can look for the DoubleDash option to add items from these stores. Available stores are indicated on the app inside the DoorDash app. Theoretically, orders from these different stores and restaurants are supposed to arrive at the same time, though a line at the bottom of today’s blog post notes that “deliveries may arrive separately.”

In certain cities, DoorDash is also offering DoubleDash for local restaurants. In these markets, users can add “complimentary items” from other restaurants to their existing order. 

All of this is further evidence that DoorDash is very serious about becoming a go-to service for more than just restaurant food. Besides launching DashMart last year, the San Francisco-based company has also launched a grocery delivery service and has existing deals in place with some c-stores. As of this week, DoorDash is also said to be in talks to invest in Germany-based service Gorillas, which offers speedy grocery delivery from small “dark stores” located in dense residential areas.

At the end of last month, DoorDash also opened a new location of its ghost kitchen facility. For now, that operation only delivers restaurant food.

Kroger and Kitchen United Partner to Bring Ghost Kitchens to Grocery Stores

Kitchen United (KU) will expand its ghost kitchen network to include Kroger locations thanks to a just-announced partnership between KU and the grocery retailer. KU kitchens will be located at various Kroger locations, the first of these being at a Ralphs in Los Angeles slated to open this fall. 

Participating Kroger stores will house a KU location that includes “up to six local, regional or national” restaurant brands, according to today’s press release. Customers can order meals from these restaurants via the KU mobile app or onsite at a self-service kiosk. They will have the option to bundle items from different restaurant concepts together into a single order, a concept that KU’s Chief Business Officer Atul Sood recently said was technically complex but extremely important to the future of online ordering.  

While customers can choose to have their meal delivered (via KU’s third-party delivery service partners), the bigger appeal here might be the pickup option. Since the kitchens will be located onsite at stores, Kroger customers can order food while they shop for groceries and simply pick their meal up at the end of their trip.

The partnership is another example of the lines between the restaurant ghost kitchen and the grocery store fading. A year ago, Euromonitor predicted such a shift would happen. In keeping with that, the last several months have seen companies like GoPuff, Ghost Kitchens, and Food Rocket launch initiatives that sit squarely between the grocery and the ghost kitchen.

Moving towards this gray area is intentional on the part of KU. “We are proud to have launched a number of successful ghost kitchen centers across the country, and now we are applying our experience and taking steps to expand in non-traditional ghost kitchen formats such as retail shopping centers and food halls like our newest kitchen center location in Chicago alongside our efforts with Kroger,” Sood noted in a statement. 

He added that KU’s tech stack is an important part of this setup and can optimize “any kitchen setting for streamlined and profitable off-premise business.”

More KU-Kroger locations are planned for the coming months. In the meantime, those interested in learning more about ghost kitchens and the ghost kitchen tech stack can tune into The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17. The virtual event will feature KU’s CTO Jessi Moss along with many other restaurants, tech companies, and thought leaders in the restaurant space. Grab a ticket here.

Estonia: Ride Hailing Startup Bolt Raises €600M to Get Into Grocer Delivery

Bolt, an Uber-like rideshare company based in Estonia, has raised €600 million (~$713M USD) to branch out into grocery delivery, CNBC reported today. New investors in the round include Sequoia and fund managers Tekne and Ghisallo, along with existing investors G Squared, D1 Capital and Naya. With its new funding, Bolt is now valued at roughly $4.75 billion.

Just like Uber, Bolt saw its ride hailing business decimated by the pandemic last year. Bolt told CNBC that while its ride hailing business has recovered, the company has seen dramatic growth in its grocery delivery business. The company operates 15-minute grocery delivery and has plans to roll the service out to 10 more European countries including Sweden, Portugal and Croatia over the next few months.

But as it does expand its grocery delivery footprint, Bolt will be facing a fiercely competitive, well-funded landscape. Europe in particular has been a hot spot for grocery delivery this past year, with a number of startups bulking up their warchests with hundreds of millions in new funding. Spanish startup Glovo has raised $1.2 billion, Turkey-based Getir has raised $1 billion, Czech-based Rohlik has raised $402 million, and Germany-based Flink has raised $304 million.

The big question now looming for all these services is whether they can economically scale, a matter complicated by the fact that services such as 15-minute grocery delivery are fast becoming a commodity. If there are half a dozen speedy grocery delivery services in a city, customers will likely gravitate towards the cheapest option. This race to the bottom is driving some speedy grocery delivery services here in the U.S. to diversify more into ghost kitchens and private label ready-to-eat meals.

It’s also worth noting that here in the U.S., Uber is investing more heavily in the grocery delivery space. The company recently acquired the remaining 47 percent of grocery delivery startup Cornershop, and partnered with Albertsons to offer grocery delivery in 400 U.S. cities.

Gopuff Confirms Latest $1B Funding Round

Gopuff announced today that it has raised another $1 billion in funding, confirming reports from last week of just such a round. New investors Blackstone’s Horizon platform, Guggenheim Investments, Hedosophia, MSD Partners, and Adage Capital joined with existing investors Fidelity Management and Research Company, Softbank Vision Fund 1, Atreides Management, and Eldridge in the round.

The new money comes just months after Gopuff raised $1.5 billion, in March of this year. With this new haul, Gopuff has now raised $3.4 billion in total and has a $15 billion valuation.

According to a press announcement emailed to The Spoon, Gopuff will use the new money fuel its geographic expansion across North America and further into the UK and Europe. Gopuff currently operates 450 facilities operating in more than 850 cities across the U.S.

Here in the U.S., Gopuff’s massive fundraising this year far surpasses the comparatively paltry sums raised by its speedy grocery delivery competition. JOKR is a distant second with $170 million, Fridge No More raised $15.4 million, Food Rocket raised $2 million and 1520 has raised an undisclosed seed round.

Gopuff will face more stiff competition as they spread across Europe. The speedy grocery delivery scene there is a little more mature — and better funded than their U.S. counterparts. Spain-based Glovo has raised $1.2 billion, Turkey-based Getir raised $1 billion, and Germany-based Gorillas has raised $335.4 million. (Side note: if you want to raise funding for you speedy grocery delivery startup, start your company name with the letter “G.”) And that doesn’t include all the other players like Flink, Weezy, and Jiffy.

But Gopuff isn’t just expanding its footprint. The company is also branchig beyond straight up grocery delivery and into pre-made meals. Gopuff officially launched Gopuff Kitchen last week, and is already serving hot pizza, chicken tenders, salads, coffees and more in cities like Austin, Miami, Nashville, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and San Antonio.

The speedy grocery delivery started in earnest this year. And with $2.5 billion raised in the past six months, Gopuff has armed itself to try and finish them.

Speedy Delivery Grocer 1520 Knows There’s a Lot of Competition (and Where that Competition is Headed Next)

The startup 1520 got its name from its value proposition — to deliver grocery orders to customers in 15 to 20 minutes. The company is not alone in that mission, especially in its hometown of New York City, where a number of fast grocery delivery services have launched this year. Two of those services have raised more than $100 million dollars each. But 1520 co-founders Oleg Shevlyagin and Moucheg Sahakian aren’t too worried about the competition, and have developed their own plan to stand apart from (and stay ahead of) other speedy delivery startups.

Before co-founding 1520, Shevlyagin and Sahakian both worked at Russian tech giant Yandex, where they launched the first three such speedy grocery stores for that company. The two brought that experience with them when they started 1520 in Manhattan in January of this year.

Like others in the space, 1520 operates a number of small, delivery-only grocery stores that carry a limited inventory and have a small delivery radius. The company now serves everything below 96th St. (for those New Yorkers who know what that means), and is eyeing expansion to Long Island City, Jersey City and Hoboken, New Jersey.

During a video chat with Shevlyagin and Sahakian this week, I asked them about the proliferating number of speedy delivery startups and what that means for 1520. “I don’t think that competition adds too much pressure,” Shevlyagin said, “You have 40 grocery chains in New York alone. We have four players in this ultra-fast space.”

Operationally speaking, Shevlyagin said that 1520 is different from other speedy delivery startups in a few ways. First, the company operates slightly smaller dark stores that are only 1,500 to 2,000 sq. feet, compared with the 2,500 to 3,000 sq. ft. stores other services run. Despite these smaller stores, 1520 has a slightly larger delivery radius than its competition. Most speedy services have a delivery radius between 1 and 1.5 miles. Shevlyagin said 1520’s delivery radius is between 2 and 2.5 miles.

This larger delivery radius in turn means more customers. As a comparison, fellow speedy delivery startup Food Rocket says that one of its stores serves 50,000 households, whereas one 1520 store services 90,000 households. It’s hard to say that bigger is better in this scenario. What you gain in footprint, you could lose in speed. Food Rocket delivers in 10 minutes, while 1520 is 15 to 20 minutes. That may not sound like much, but if you’re in the business of treating groceries like an on-demand utility, those extra minutes might cost you extra business.

But Shevlyagin also says 1520 is different from other speedy delivery startups in more existential ways, too. “GoPuff and DashMart are running [a] convenience store rather than full-blown grocery,” Shevlyagin said, “For them it would be more like you are running out of beer and snack. For us, it’s ‘I want to cook my dinner tonight.'”

As such, Shevlyagin said that 1520 is focused on high-quality fresh food and produce. “We do believe urban customers are more concerned about their health,” Shevlyagin said, “They want produce rather than chips and a Coke.” I’m not sure if that’s entirely true. I mean, who doesn’t love the idea of a late night pint of ice cream delivered to your door in minutes? But 1520 is certainly choosing a lane with its fresh food approach.

There are ways in which 1520 is very much like others in the rapidly evolving fast grocery delivery space. Similar to Food Rocket and DashMart, 1520 is moving into ready-to-eat meals, and will offer its own line of sandwiches, salads and microwaveable meals.

Unlike others in the space, 1520 has yet to raise a massive amount of funding. Germany-based Gorillas raised $290 million prior to its U.S. expansion, and New York City-based JOKR just raised $170 million to fuel its own growth.

Shevlyagin said that 1520 has so far raised a Seed round of funding. I asked him if his competition’s now-sizeable warchests were a big concern for him. Shevlyagin was rather matter-of-fact, saying, “As any other venture-backed startup, we will have to raise at some point, probably in the next two to six months.”

But the funding issue also matters as these companies look to expand and gain first-mover advantage in new cities, since there are only so many cities in the U.S. with dense enough populations to support speedy grocery. I asked Shevlyagin how 1520 will roll out to stay ahead of its rising competition. “The real estate world is the biggest barometer,” he said, explaining that they look at real estate listings to see where dark store type spaces are being leased, and by whom. “We know what’s happening in every city in the country.”

Even if other players get to one of 1520’s target markets first, Shevlyagin doesn’t appear too concerned. “It still takes you some time to make sure your supply chain works well,” he said. “We are deep in discussions with other cities. We still have this time.”

Will Gopuff’s (Second) Billion-Dollar Funding Round Make its Grocery Competition Go Poof?

In addition to delivering groceries fast, Gopuff is pretty speedy when it comes to raising big sums of money. Bloomberg and Axios both reported yesterday that Gopuff is raising an additional $1 billion in funding, according to sources familiar with the matter. This new money comes just months after Gopuff raised $1.5 billion in March, and will give the company a $15 billion post-money valuation.

Like others in the space, Gopuff operates a network of dark stores in the U.S. that deliver goods like groceries in 30 minutes, 24 hours a day. But unlike its competition here, Gopuff has raised a ton more money. If this latest round does indeed close next week, the company will have raised nearly $3.5 billion since 2015. By comparison, other speedy grocery services have far less funding: Gorillas has raised $335M, Fridge No More raised $16.9M, JOKR raised $170M, and Food Rocket raised $2M.

Gopuff is also a little different from its competitors in its value proposition. Those other services promise super-fast delivery of groceries in as few as 10 minutes. Because they deliver to a very limited radius, they can tailor their inventories to the particular tastes of the neighborhood they serve. But those services are also very small right now. Three are only in New York City (Gorillas, Fridge No More, JOKR), and two are in San Francisco (Food Rocket, Gorillas). Gopuff, on the other hand, has more than 300 facilities operating in 550 cities across the U.S. With another $1 billion, Gopuff can accelerate its expansion and grab market share before the competition can even get out of their hometown.

But speedy, on-demand grocery delivery will soon become commonplace in big cities, if you believe the CEO of Food Rocket. As such, we are starting to see these speedy grocery services start to differentiate. Food Rocket, for instance, is adding branded ready-to-eat meals and ghost kitchens to make even more types of delivery friendly meals. But there, too, goes Gopuff: the company has been hiring out kitchen staff and managers for its own ghost kitchen services so it can deliver its own meals.

Gopuff’s biggest competitor might actually be DoorDash at this point. DoorDash has a nationwide delivery network and infrastructure, is expanding aggressively into grocery, has a ton of money thanks to its IPO, operates its own growing line of delivery only DashMart convenience stores, and has its own ghost kitchen program. With another billion in the bank, Gopuff has the goods and the cash now to have a go at DoorDash.

I quipped on Linkedin earlier this week that it would be weird if your speedy grocery delivery service didn’t raise over $100 million. Given Gopuff’s furious fundraising pace, I might have to adjust my joke.

Instacart and Fabric Partner to Offer Automated Fulfillment to Grocers

Instacart announced today a new multi-year partnership with Fabric that will see the two companies jointly offer automated order fulfillment services to North American grocery retailers.

The new automated fulfillment option will combine Instacart’s e-commerce ordering capabilities and human shoppers with Fabric’s robot-powered item-assembly process. Retailers can outfit this new system inside existing retail spaces or in dedicated warehouses. So customers will place a grocery order online, robots will assemble those items and Instacart shoppers will pack them up and either stage the completed order for curbside pickup or deliver it to the customer’s front door.

The company didn’t provide many details about implementing this new automated system, only saying it is the first phase of its “next-generation fulfillment initiative” and that it “plans to kick off early-stage concept pilots in partnership with Fabric and grocery retail partners over the coming year and beyond.”

Interest in automated fulfillment certainly accelerated over the past year because of the pandemic. Fears of COVID-19 had record amounts of people buying groceries online in the U.S. Those numbers have come down in recent months as the vaccines have rolled out and people feel more comfortable shopping in person. The latest data from Brick Meets Click shows that U.S. online grocery sales for pickup and delivery were $5.3 billion in June, down from its peak of $7.2 billion in June of 2020. If those numbers continue to trend down, will retailers still feel the pressing need to automate?

Big retailers like Albertsons, Kroger and Walmart have all doubled down on their own automated fulfillment plans over the past year. But as Grocery Dive has pointed out, there are still concerns around the efficacy of automated order fulfillment and whether it provides truly valuable productivity gains and return on investment. Now, instead of building their own automated infrastructure, smaller retailers could choose to offload that work to Instacart and Fabric, so we could see more grocers trying these systems out.

AiFi Retrofitting Two More Loop Neighborhood Stores with Cashierless Checkout Tech

AiFi announced today that it is adding its cashierless checkout technology to two Loop Neighborhood store locations in California, starting in the San Francisco Bay Area. The deal expands on an existing partnership that saw the two companies opening a fully autonomous gas station NanoStore in Campbell, California in 2019.

AiFi retrofits stores with cameras to create a computer vision-based cashierless checkout system, allowing customers to walk in, grab what they want, and leave, getting charged automatically on their way out. For these new Loop Neighborhood stores, customers will use the AiFi app to scan a QR code upon entering or leaving the store so they can skip the checkout line.

AiFi x Loop Neighborhood: Autonomous stores in Silicon Valley

Cashierless checkout has been gaining momentum throughout 2021, with a number of startups getting funded and system installations going public. It’s been a particularly busy year for AiFi, which entered into a partnership with Dutch convenience store chain Wundermart that will eventually see 1,000 autonomous locations opened up. AiFi also partnered with Verizon to open a 5G-powered popup NanoStore at this year’s Indianapolis 500. Most recently, the company opened an autonomous NanoStore with the Polish convenience chain Żabka.

But AiFi isn’t alone in advancing autonomous retail this year. Zippin has opened up a store in the Barclay’s Center in New York. Trigo is opening cashierless checkout with the Rewe grocery chain in Germany. And Amazon opened up its first full-sized cashierless checkout grocery store in Washington state.

There are a few reasons for all of this accelerated interest in cashierless checkout. First the pandemic (which hasn’t gone away) is pushing retailers to reduce the amount of human-to-human interaction in their stores. Cashierless checkout not only removes a human cashier from the shopping equation, but also means customers don’t have to stand in line next to each other. Additionally, cashierless checkout can benefit the retailer with more real-time insight into shelf inventories. Cameras and sensors keep tabs on what people are picking up and putting back, so managers can identify shortages more quickly.

AiFi’s CEO recently told me that while there is a lot of news and excitement around cashierless checkout, mainstream adoption is still about a decade away. Which means we’ll be writing about similar store openings for a long time to come.

AiFi didn’t disclose exactly where the new cashierless Loop stores will open, but if you’re in the Bay Area and stumble across one, be sure to tell us about your experience with it!

No Foolin’, JOKR Raises $170M Series A for Speedy Grocery Delivery

JOKR is the latest speedy grocery delivery startup to have raised a nine-figure round of funding. The company announced today that it has raised a $170 million a Series A round led by GGV Capital, Balderton Capital and Tiger Global Management. Activant Capital, Greycrot, FJ Labs, Kaszek, Monashees and HV Capital also participated.

Like other startups in the space, JOKR operates a network of small, delivery-only grocery stores that carry a limited number of items and have a small delivery radius. With this model, JOKR can tailor inventory to a specific neighborhood, sell local products (i.e., bakery goods), and deliver within 10 to 15 minutes of the customer placing an order.

JOKR’s big fundraise comes just three months after it started operations and a month and half after it launched its grocery delivery services in New York City. According to a press announcement sent to The Spoon, JOKR said that since it started operations it has opened up a new hub roughly every day and now operates 10 hubs in New York, and 100 hubs across nine cities including São Paolo, Brazil; Mexico City, Mexico; Bogota, Colombia; Lima, Peru; Warsaw, Poland; and Vienna, Austria.

Of course, JOKR isn’t the only speedy grocery delivery service bringing in big funding. In fact, it would be odd if JOKR hadn’t raised more than $100 million. Gopuff raised $1.5 billion in March to grow its delivery service. Last month Germany’s Flink raised $240 million, and Turkey’s Getir raised $550 million (after raising $300 million in March). Germany-based Gorillas raised $290 million in March, launched its own U.S. operations in NYC at the end of May, and is already expanding to San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago.

Vitaly Alexandrov, CEO of the San Francisco-based Food Rocket speedy grocery service, recently told me that in order for his business to work, one hub needs to be able to service 50,000 households. That means that at some point not too far off, all of these services are going to be vying for the same markets. Alexandrov said that eventually 10-minute grocery delivery will become a commodity, which is why Food Rocket is looking to differentiate itself with ready to eat meals, ghost kitchens and will eventually open up its logistics and delivery platform to other retailers. Gopuff too, is diversifying by getting into the ghost kitchen business as well.

Despite all this funding, we don’t yet know if or how consumers will take to this new, utility-style model of grocery shopping. Many of these services don’t have order minimums or delivery fees, but will that be sustainable as they scale? Will consumers place large enough orders to keep these businesses going or will these services burn out a la Kozmo.com?

We’ll learn the answers to these questions over the coming months but one thing we know already: Most of these startups won’t fail because of a lack of funding.

Halla Raises $4.5M for Its Food Recommendation Platform

Halla, the AI-powered production recommendation service for grocery retail, announced today that it has raised $4.5 million in Series A1 funding, led by Food Retail Ventures. This brings the total amount raised by Halla to $8.5 million.

Halla’s platform integrates with a grocer’s existing digital commerce solution to provide customized product recommendations and substitutions for out of stock items to consumers. But Halla’s platform doesn’t just rely on previous purchases to make its recommendations. The company says it uses more than 100 billion shopper and product data points to predict what a shopper is looking for. Halla’s product video embedded below illustrates how Halla’s the system looks at all kinds of data about a shopper as it makes a recommendation in real time.

Grocery has been the beneficiary of a ton of funding this year, with $10 billion going into the sector as of July this year. Most of of the funding and attention has been around speedy grocery delivery services, but money has been doled out to startups working up and down the grocery stack. Hungryroot, and online grocer that uses machine learning for predictive recommendations, raised $40 million last month. In April, Trax raised $640 million for its computer vision-based inventory management system, and Shelf Engine raised $41 million for its perishable inventory management platform.

A big reason for all this money flowing into grocery is the pandemic. Fears around COVID-19 sent record amounts of people into online grocery shopping last year, creating new logistical and fulfillment issues for retailers. But the pandemic also highlighted flaws in our existing grocery supply chain, as evidenced by the panic hoarding and empty shelves that happened at the beginning of the outbreak. All of this is to say there are a bunch of new issues for grocery retailers to solve post-pandemic, which means plenty of opportunities for startups.

Halla said that a “top-5 U.S. grocer” is currently running Halla in more than 1,100 e-commerce storefronts. Halla will use the new funding to double the number of stores it’s in, and double its headcount by 2022.

Uber Expands Grocery Delivery to 400 US Cities, Adds Albertsons Brands as Partners

Uber’s grocery delivery service is now available in more than 400 cities across the U.S., according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The company has also added Albertsons retail brands to its delivery platform.

The move marks a big jump for Uber, which started its grocery delivery business in the U.S. a little more than a year ago, growing it to 100 cities. With today’s expansion, Uber’s grocery delivery will be available in major markets such as Miami, Dallas, New York City, Washington D.C. and for the first time in California by way of San Francisco.

At the same time, Uber also bulked up its retail partnerships with the addition of Albertsons stores to its platforms. Over the course of this year, Uber will roll out delivery to 1,200 Albertsons stores including Albertsons, Safeway, Jewel-Osco, ACME, Tom Thumb, Randalls and more.

Uber got into the grocery delivery game in July of 2020 following its purchase of a majority stake in Latin American online grocery delivery marketplace Cornershop in 2019. Since that time, grocery delivery has seen an explosion in usage, thanks in large part to the pandemic, which makes it an attractive market for a logistics company like Uber. Last month, SEC filings showed that Uber was acquiring the remaining 47 percent of Cornershop.

Unlike the modern ride sharing-business, which Uber basically invented, the company will be facing a lot of competition for your grocery delivery dollar. DoorDash, which started out in restaurant delivery has made its own aggressive moves into grocery delivery and announced its own partnership with Albertsons last month. And of course Uber will be going up against Instacart, the 800-pound gorilla in third-party grocery delivery.

But perhaps the more interesting competition in major cities for Uber will come from the rapidly expanding speedy grocery delivery startups, which promise to get you your groceries in as few as 10 minutes. Services like JOKR and Fridge No More are expanding across New York City. Gorillas is hopping beyond New York and into San Francisco, where Food Rocket also operates.

These services all operate small, delivery-only grocery stores with a limited delivery radius. They are also vertically integrated, controlling their inventory and employing their own drivers. As Food Rocket CEO, Vitaly Alexandrov recently told me, having their own fleet of delivery people gives his company an advantage over services like Uber and Instacart. When an order is placed by the customer, the network doesn’t have to spend time finding a driver who will take the job. There is already a dedicated staffer on hand to make deliveries go out faster.

DoorDash operates its own line of DashMart delivery-only convenience stores, and Instacart is reportedly looking to build out its own automated fulfillment centers. With all this competition, will Uber, which has famously built its empire by emphatically not owning parts of its business like its driver network, need to cave and develop a more owned and operated stack?

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First we’ll have to see if Uber customers will even use Uber for grocery delivery on a massive scale.